"Well, no, not exactly? She's a paladin of Iomedae, and it's less that things are tense and more that - it's her crusade, in the sense that she called it and told us what we were doing, and my crusade in the sense that she hasn't given us any particular further instructions on how to run it since Sarenith, other than sending her advisors. And I am realizing that I am not entirely sure what would happen, if I made decisions that she strongly disagreed with."

"Oh. That - does sound complicated. Do you have - formal letters of authorization on being appointed Knight-Commander -"

"Maybe?"

She is going to die of embarrassment, and then the demons will take Golarion, because she isn't good enough at understanding her paperwork.

"Everyone here is very impressed with you," Marit says patiently. "It's your first season. Do you know how much of an idiot Iomedae was when she was twenty-five?"

"No? I guess presumably more of one than she is now?" She's really very grateful that he's not being visibly disappointed in her, but she's already more than disappointed enough for both of them, see.

"Uh - any formal papers we received when the crusade was called were probably being held by Irabeth. Irabeth is the one who actually ran the successful parts of the defense of Kenabres during Deskari's attack, I was following her plan when we retook the wardstone. When the Queen called the crusade, Irabeth was assigned to - well, to help me have any idea what I was doing and teach me how to run any sort of military operation, I didn't actually have any command experience, unless I guess you count what happened during the attack. She's great. Also kind of inexperienced, according to some people, but great. Except that Irabeth was captured just before the approach on Drezen, and - wasn't the same after, wasn't really okay, and I ended up moving her back to being a squad leader and helping with the defense of Drezen specifically. I don't - actually know what she did with any of the documents she might have had."

"- I'm so sorry."

"Thanks," she says, because she can't actually think of what else to say to that.

He doesn't actually want to go back to talking about the documents unless she seems to want to do that. When people mention in passing that their closest advisor was captured and tortured by demons and isn't okay and probably won't be, they do not always want to talk about it, but they don't always want to talk about paperwork either.

Korva, would you like to have this conversation in front of fewer people?

Maybe.

"Okay!" says Arueshalae, clapping her hands together. "Aivu, you were going to teach me how to play hide and seek, weren't you? We could play it now, couldn't we?"

"Oh boy! We could! But we'd need more than two people, or it won't be any fun!"

"That's okay! Ember and Daeran and Woljif all love games, so we could all play together. In that wing of the mansion, so we don't get in anybody's way."

"Okay!!!!!"

Marit can make himself smile appreciatively at a succubus who he does not trust at all in the same manner he'd smile appreciatively at a human who did the same thing, but the succubus, being gifted at parsing human expression, will probably notice the difference. 

Once they've gone - "I don't think there's anything wrong, if the documents are lost, writing Nerosyan asking for more copies to be made as the reference copy carried with the crusade was destroyed or lost in fighting."

"I guess we could probably do that. Assuming they have copies, but I'm pretty sure they manage to run an entire government down there, so they probably know how to handle things like that."

"They should really have sent you a reference copy and have the originals somewhere that doesn't routinely get Fireballed. Anyway, I'd expect those documents to lay out in what territory and over which people you have ultimate authority and where Mendev does. If it doesn't, then we'll have to propose an agreement that is clear about that."

"Well, that certainly seems like an important thing to understand."

She is at this point consciously noticing that she kind of wants license to complain about a bunch of things about the crusade, and maybe also her life, but that seems - probably unproductive? Maybe it wouldn't be unproductive, maybe Marit would actually have useful responsible suggestions. That's still kind of a hard thing to figure out how to talk about.

"The legal standing of the Crusade is the kind of thing that, if it's unclear, is going to at some point run into a very messy case where people dispute who is allowed to do what and everyone gets very angry at each other. If it's clear cut in advance, then when that happens you can just kick it to the Abadarans and never think about it again."

"Yeah, I mean, I think that's what I was noticing, I do not actually know what the legal status of the crusade is, and that seems like it's obviously going to cause a problem the first time Queen Galfrey disagrees with any of my decisions. ...also seems like it would be very useful to actually know the extent to which any of our actions reflect on Mendev and to what extent they don't, instead of various advisors just claiming that various actions will reflect on Mendev."

" - yes, that seems important. And to what extent your actions reflect on Iomedae's Church, it seems - extremely uncharacteristic if Her Church doesn't care a lot about that."

"Nobody has particularly lectured me about that one - but, thinking on it, I am not sure whether that's because everyone is aware that they don't reflect on them, or because everyone has decided that it's not their place to lecture me about that because as the subject of a miraculous intervention they obviously do. Ugh."

"I wouldn't usually identify myself as an Iomedan. Personally. But given I am also not Mendevian, I suppose that's not definitive."

"Iomedae's Church in the future honestly sounds - disorganized and like a mess. I am withholding judgment about exactly how much and why. But Iomedae as I know her would care very much if She was understood to be sponsoring something, because people might - trust it as part of their trust in her, and it would be important that it was worthy of that trust, or else able to clearly state that no such trust should be understood to exist. One of our first thoughts, actually, before we got more context, was that it would be awkward to have a Chaotic Good Knight-Commander of a crusade She was sponsoring because the Church would be constantly stepping on your toes about - respects in which our own conduct and any conduct we endorse is constrained by treaty and policy. It doesn't sound like that's happening, which is good unless it's because the Church no longer understands any Crusade it endorses to be constrained by treaty and policy."

"Well, none of the people who have been stepping on my toes have been representing themselves as representatives of Iomedae. Except for Galfrey, I guess, but that is not really how I would describe my relationship with Galfrey given that she mostly doesn't talk to me. And there's Seelah, of course, but Seelah was a fairly novice paladin who was exactly as swept up in things as I was, and she's mostly very clear about her advice only being her own."

" - also, miiight or might not be chaotic good, while we're being very honest with each other. The reading showed up when the butterflies did and I'm not sure whether it's - like the thing that happens when you try to read a cleric."

"- fair. Elysium-sponsored, maybe Neutral Good. I am glad no one stepping on your toes is representing themselves as doing so on Iomedae's behalf, but really do need to check what Her church is up to. I'm hoping they're just very very busy with the Asmodeus situation and that fully explains all the rest."